Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

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jayphailey
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Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Tue Dec 10, 2019 2:51 am

First draft, any corrections or changes?

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Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter


- Ship Name Kestral Class. Individual ships have numbers, not official names. Human Pilots who use the same one for a long time tend to name them, but this is unofficial

- Brief description of ship: A small ship with droopy pointed wings

- Campaign role for the ship: A method for PCs to swoop into adventures

- Fleet role: To carry phasers and micro-torpedoes into position to attack. The phasers on these ships are not large on a starship scale, but are pretty large on a ground combat scale.

- Age: This type of ship is over 60 years old at this time. No one uses the original stock builds anymore.

- Built: The first ones were built in 2335, to replace older types of these. The Federation has produced a lot of these, given their limited role.

- Length: 25m

- Distinguishing Marks (Odd paint job, repair scars etc.)
Official Kestrals are usually painted white or gray with penants, striping and idenitifications. In field use, these quickly begin to pick up nose are and loud paint jobs.

- Equipment Quirks and Problems:
The Kestrals have been chronically upgraded and the base build has been modified several times. So upon being assigned one, experienced pilots often dive under the hood to look for themselves which devices and systems have been fitted to their particular example and how this affects their performance.
A half-assed or shade-tree upgrade of one of these vehciles could result in interesting operational quirks and lots of "Personality"
These ships are "adequately" protected for a ground wafare environment. In space they are are not adequately defended against heavy ships. Their weapons are generally too small to be helpful against a full sized starship.

- Equipment Advantages
The Kestrals are some of the fastest normal space ships in Starfleet. Their tactical manuevering ablity is extreme, and pilots love them. They are very swoopy and fast.

- Shuttles, number, any odd ones?
The Kestral IS the shuttle

- Primary Power:
The Kestrals use a micro-warp-core, which generates a lot of energy and a lot of heat. Opinions vary. Some people remove some safeties to allow for higher peak power output, figuring they need to survive this battle first and gamma ray exposure later. Other people are careful with the warp core, having seen Kestrals turned into a ball of expanding hot gass.

- Secondary Power:
The Kestral Uses a common shuttlecraft Impulse drive and system - but one from a huge cargo shuttle, reworked to drive a much smaller ship more aggressively. They don't need much fine tuning to compete as racing ships, with excessive power to weight ratios.

- Primary Weapons:
The kestrals Usually have fixed forward firing pulse phaser cannons. These are metaphiorically like 20mm cannon. They're too small to impact Military Starship defenses. They can do serious damage to civilian ships, antique ships and ground targets.

Many have a secondary phaser beam array fo situations where that would be more effective

Some people have replaced these weapons with others. Along the Klingon/Orion Frontier, nonStarfleet and NonFederation Kestrels will often mount Disruptor cannon instead.

- Secondary Weapons:
Kestrals have micro-torpedoes. These have changed over time. These physical projectiles are slower, and harder to score a hit with, but pack a signficant punch. These are used for Bunkers, defended installations, and armored vehicles as well as the rare mecha or large monster.

The Kestrals have Wing Mounts to fire large missiles or torpedoes, should their target need more exploding.

- Service History
The Kestrals are a very particular type of machine. They are designed for times when a starship phaser array is too heavy, but a phaser rifle is too light. They are designed to attack Artillery pieces, armored vehicles, fortifications, bunkers and so on. They also do a neat job turning enemy shuttles into scrap.

They are metaphorically, Il-2's or A-10 Warthogs.

Fighting other attack shuttles is so rare as to be almost unknown, but they do an adequate job of it.

Kestrals can also be used as versatile manned drones on the rare occasions this is called for. A flight of Kestrals networked into their motherships sensor network can increase the networks sensitivity and range a good deal (They can act as manned antenna extensions)

They are also used for searches in conditions where Starship sensors are jammed or fouled by conditions. This is rare, but not unknown.

Many Wings of Kestrals serve as police ships and defenders for lightly defended planets. A flight of Kestrals can damage or drive off an Orion Light Raider, if some circumstances are in their favor.

Some trouble makers decided not to attack Kestral defended targets, not because they're too tough, but because the moment the first one explodes, that's a murder charge and everyone in Subspace range is now aware that you're willing to kill people over the current engagement. Reinforcements usually move in that direction at high speed once that level of violence is estalished.

This makes Kestrals spoilers for surprise attacks.

The Kestral design has been surpassed by a higher technology design, and manufacture of these is fading away.

But the thousands already in existence can expect to be flown until the wings come off.

- Crew:
1 or 2
The one seat version is more of a fighter plane mentality. The two seat version often adds more weapons at the cost of some speed and maneuverability.

Both kinds can be used as reconaisance planes.

Recently, there have been experiments using unmanned Kestrals as drones, so if they get damaged or destroyed the pilot is safe on the mothership. No one is sure if the control signals can be maintained under hostile, adverse or weird conditions.

- Other



On a scale of 1 - 1000 where 1000 is the Enterprise-D of 2364.

Science capacity - 25 - these ships have tactical sensors and otherwise normal generic shuttlecraft sensors. They can mount a science pod and carry that along. But the pilots are uually not science officers.

Crew Comfort - 25 - you put on a space suit and you climb into the plane. These vehicles have aggressive inertial control systems to keep the pilot from being crushed by g forces. But other than that, they aren't meant for long flights

Duration - 10. A pilot might last for a while on emergency oxygen, but these things are short ranged. Missions of over 24 hours are discouraged

Medical facilities - 0. If destroyed, the emergency transporter will try to beam you someplace safe.

Tactical maneuvering - 15,000 - they are very very swoopy, fast and agile.

Strategic Speed - 25 - the kestrals have a short duration Warp 4 wapr drive rig. It's meant to go across a solar system quickly to engage an enemy. They do not have the fuel or supplies to go a long way.

Defense - 100

Offense - 175

Versatility - 100, you can slap weird pods on it

Internal Security - 500. It has security systems commensurate with preventing casual theft or hacking. Older models of the vehcile may or may not have been up dated and may or may not be easier to steal. Often this quality is given less thought, since users are more focused on placing weapons fire on target

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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by Innkeeper » Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:11 am

Ane will Berk these things. Putting RI controlled semi-automatus controls like they do everything else.
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jayphailey
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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Sun Dec 15, 2019 6:53 am

Zarian, Aneilog and Tanaki Engineers will say "nooooooo"

The Kestrals are OLD.

We'll build you NEW ONES!

So do they want drone with no manned capacity or fighters that are mostly unmanned by can be flown?

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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Sun Dec 15, 2019 6:58 am

Federation_attack_fighter,_aft_ventral.jpg
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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:02 am

peregrine-compare.jpg
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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:16 am

The Peregine is an armed courier/scout, the Federation Equivalent of the Bre'el class BOP.

The Kestral is the one or two man fighter plane.

The Ma'jel is a two to four man attack ship, think a Bomber to the Kestrals Fighter. Longer range, heavier payload - Designed to carry heavier seeking warheads up close to blow up a hard targets in difficult places where starship main phaser strikes or full sized torpedoes are not appropriate.

Otherwise used the same as a kestral.
Peregrine Ma'jel Kestral Danube .gif
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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:17 am

View of the Ma'jel class attacker
maquis-raider2-preemptivestrike.jpg
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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:19 am

The Peregrine, Ma'jel and Kestral are older ships. Newer, more up to date versions are either available or being developed.

But, out in the sticks, you use what you can get

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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by jayphailey » Sun Dec 15, 2019 7:32 am

The new hotness is the Valkyrie class fighter.

Clean slate design, built with the most up to date systems available.

For our purposes, they are not much different. But pilot would notice the Valkyrie is a little more user friendly.
Valkyrie_class_fighter.jpg
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Re: Kestral Class Attack Shuttle Fighter

Post by Innkeeper » Sun Dec 15, 2019 8:59 am

jayphailey wrote:
Sun Dec 15, 2019 6:53 am
Zarian, Aneilog and Tanaki Engineers will say "nooooooo"

The Kestrals are OLD.

We'll build you NEW ONES!

So do they want drone with no manned capacity or fighters that are mostly unmanned by can be flown?
Making Berks dates from the early 24rd century, so they do have them and built when new.

The Berk control modules do not take the whole thing. So a two seater made a one seater would be the standard Kestral Berk.

Do the same with any other aerospace plane. Loose one seat to the automatic controls. Old Kestrals are laying about Ane Starbases with the Berk guts ripped out and FOR SALE -- CHEAP! signs in the cockpit windows.

The new ones have smaller modules. So no cockpit space is lost
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